Saturday, September 27, 2014

(UPDATE-4) Another word that the government agencies and mainstream news outlets are at great pains, for some unknown reason, to avoid is "pyroclastic flow". Government officials are busy denying that's what happened in Mt. Ontake. Volcanologists on Japanese Twitter are laughing at them, though.

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(UPDATE-3) Asahi (9/28/2014) special alert quotes Nagano Prefectural Police saying there are over 30 people on the summit who are "in a state of cardiopulmonary arrest" (i.e. most likely dead).

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(UPDATE-2) NHK today (9/28/2014) is saying there are more than 10 people on the summit who are "not moving" and "in a state of cardiopulmonary arrest". Not moving, not breathing, heart not beating, but NHK and other mass media are so afraid for some reason to say the word "dead", so as not to hurt the feeling of the family members of the "not moving, not breathing, heart not beating" climbers lying in the volcanic ashes, supposedly.

(I'd call it "TEPCOization" of news reporting. Remember those unfortunate workers who dropped dead for whatever reason within the Fukushima I NPP compound, and declared by TEPCO later that they suffered cardiopulmonary arrest and were taken to the hospital several hours later, where the doctors pronounced the patient dead. As far as TEPCO is concerned, the workers died at the hospital, not at the plant.)

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(UPDATE) Kyodo News quotes Nagano Prefectural Police saying 8 people have been seriously injured, and 7 of them are unconscious. There may be deaths.

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Still shot of the video taken by Asahi Shinbun; eruption is from multiple locations:

The mountain lodge is marked by the red circle:

Video taken by one of the climbers near the top of the mountain, from RT:

Jiji Tsushin (9/27/2014) reports that 8 people were injured with one person severely injured, and that there are about 250 people trapped near the mountain top. Jiji also mentions an unconfirmed report that 4 people are buried in the ashes, and one has been rescued.

There has been a series of small earthquakes in Nagano Prefecture in the past week.

I find it interesting that Jiji's news is under the "Great Eastern Japan Disaster" (March 11, 2011 earthquake and tsunami) section. No doubt in relation to Sendai Nuclear Power Plant in Kyushu, which has been cleared to resume operation despite a huge volcanic eruption risk nearby.

Thursday, September 25, 2014

The one who started it (who also happens to be one of the Nobel Peace Prize winners) didn't even have a courtesy to inform us first, but now, according to Reuters columnist Jack Shafer, it is "our war" now.

I happened on this column as translated into Japanese at Reuters' Japanese site, and looked for the English original at Reuters. I have no idea whether the column has been read widely or how many retweets it has gotten. My guess is not widely read and few retweets, as it is a depressing read (except for those with ties to the defense industry, I suppose).

War without end: The U.S. may still be fighting in Syria in 2024, 2034, 2044 . . .

This must be what perpetual war looks like.

In a Pentagon briefing yesterday, Army Lieutenant General Bill Mayville called the cruise missiles and bombs flung at targets in Syria “the beginning of a credible and sustainable persistent campaign.” How long will the campaign last? “I would think of it in terms of years,” Mayville responded.

Although the bombs exploded on Syrian soil, they didn’t target Bashar al-Assad’s battered, murderous regime. The bombs were addressed to Syria’s enemy, the Islamic State, a nascent nation that has pledged to topple both Iraq and Syria, as well as Lebanon, Jordan, Israel, Cyprus, and parts of southern Turkey, and erect a caliphate on the parcel.

But in attacking Syria’s enemy, the United States wasn’t looking to make friends with Syria. President Barack Obama called for Assad to step down in 2011, and it was only last year that the United States was prepared to bomb Syria for having crossed the chemical-weapons “red line” to kill its own citizens. Not that the United States is remarkably choosey about which nations it counts among its allies. Among the Middle East nations joining with the United States to strike Syria is Qatar, which has allowed one of its sheikhs to raise funds for an Al Qaeda affiliate in Syria. As you know, the United States is at war with Al Qaeda in all of its flavors, including the Syria-based Khorasan Group, upon which U.S. bombs fell this week. The Khorasan Group is said to be plotting attacks on the United States and Europe.

Our perpetual war is complicated, however, by the fact that the Islamic State is the sworn enemy of Al Qaeda, from which it split earlier this year because it couldn’t play nice with Al Qaeda’s other affiliate in Syria, Jabhat al-Nusra, which is also fighting the Assad regime. Or, to look at it another way, the enemies of America’s enemies are not automatically America’s friends; and even America’s friends, which can be permissive about the flow of money to Al Qaeda, aren’t necessarily America’s friends either.

America has allies in Syria’s civil war, of course, including Harakat Hazm, part of the Free Syrian Army. Harakat Hazm is fighting Assad, but it has also fought alongside America’s enemy Jabhat al-Nusra, which has not disqualified it from receiving U.S. weapons and training. Harakat Hazm took exception to the American-led bombing of Syria in a statement, calling it an “external intervention” and “an attack on the revolution,” according to a Los Angeles Times report. So Harakat Hazm, America’s friend, which fought with America’s enemy against Syria—which is neither friend nor enemy—objects to the fact that America bombed Syria in pursuit of the Islamic State, which is also Harakat Hazm’s enemy. Meanwhile, the militant Shiite group Hezbollah is drone-bombing Jabat al-Nusrat along the Lebanon-Syria border at the same time Israel is downing Syrian jets.

Confused yet? You’ll have plenty of time to catch up. As Mayville promised, this conflict will likely go on for years.

It’s a wild card war in which allies and enemies seem arbitrary and ever-shifting. Will the American attacks strengthen the Assad regime by weakening the Islamic State, as some speculate? Or will it drive Jabhat al-Nusra closer to the Islamic State, at least in the interim? Or will the American-funded “moderates” shake off their masters and place Assad in their gun sights instead of the Islamic State? National security reporter Thomas E. Ricks, a man not subject to confusion, can’t decide whether to call the latest hostilities a new installment of a new Thirty Years’ War (1991-2021?) or another chapter in the War of the End of the Ottoman Empire (1914-2040?).

A war with a conclusion that its participants can’t see or can’t imagine is a war without end. None of the dig-in parties in Syria and Iraq look like pushovers, but neither do any of them look like sure bets. Without American intervention, the current war will likely rage on. With regard to American intervention, not even the Pentagon dares to predict an end.

For Americans, at least so far, this war is rumbling on like background noise. The usual markers of military victory—body-counts tabulated, territories seized and banked, no-fly zones established, governments-in-waiting imposed, and elections supervised—don’t apply to the Syria war. The borders, combatants, allegiances, and military objectives in the Syrian war are too fluid to conform to our usual expectations. Nor do the usual markers of peace seem to exist. There are no peace talks taking shape, no shuttle diplomacy, no evidence of a dominant power about to exert its might to create a lasting peace by flattening everybody.

In hypothesizing a 30-year-long war, I fear that Tom Ricks was off by a factor of two or three. In bombing Syria, President Obama, who inherited this war, has made this war his war, the next president’s war, and our war. Today, tomorrow, and for as far as the eye can see. Perpetual war for perpetual peace.

Combine this perpetual war for perpetual peace with Ebola scare (the disease is supposedly now out of control, thanks to oh-so-competent (not) WHO and UN), and we have FEAR hanging over us perpetually.

Enter Hermann Goering, who supposedly said the following in Nuremberg:

"Naturally the common people don't want war: Neither in Russia, nor in England, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But, after all, IT IS THE LEADERS of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is TELL THEM THEY ARE BEING ATTACKED, and denounce the peacemakers for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. IT WORKS THE SAME IN ANY COUNTRY."

About my coverage of Japan Earthquake of March 11

I am Japanese, and I not only read Japanese news sources for information on earthquake and the Fukushima Nuke Plant but also watch press conferences via the Internet when I can and summarize my findings, adding my observations.

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Well, this was, until March 11, 2011. Now it is taken over by the events in Japan, first earthquake and tsunami but quickly by the nuke reactor accident. It continues to be a one-person (me) blog, and I haven't even managed to update the sidebars after 5 months... Thanks for coming, spread the word.------------------This is an aggregator site of blogs coming out of SKF (double-short financials ETF) message board at Yahoo.

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